If the Venezuealan opposition leaders were Canadian they would be in jail awaiting trial on charges of treason, sedition and various charges under the anti-terrorism law.

If they were Canadian they'd have been allowed to show their displeasure at the polling station.

But it's still an interesting thought experiment! What if Justin Trudeau indefinitely "postponed" elections at all levels of government, imprisoned Andrew Scheer on trumped up charges, ordered Tom Mulcair to leave politics for the next 15 years, and stacked the Supreme Court with appointees who would try to replace opposition MPs in the HoC, I wonder whether most babblers would be supporting Trudeau, or the protesters in the streets?

What if the charges aren't tumped up. What if the oppostion has no interest in democracy and after cheating to win a super majority tried to meet illegally using the contested MP's votes with the stated intention of removing the elected President and amending the constitution unilaterally without the benefit of any citizen imput?

That is the other side of the story from Magoo's side of the barricades.

What if the charges aren't tumped up. What if the oppostion has no interest in democracy and after cheating to win a super majority tried to meet illegally using the contested MP's votes with the stated intention of removing the elected President and amending the constitution unilaterally without the benefit of any citizen imput?

How many months have Maduro and his loyal Supreme Court had to demonstrate this? I think it's one year, eight months exactly (or 20 months)... is my math right?

"What if....?". Ya, let's NEVER actually have a transparent investigation, then we can say "What if....?" forever.

"The hypocrisy of today's imperialists who lambaste Venezuela's Maduro for being a 'dictator', but who hail the unelected hereditary rulers of Saudi Arabia as they sell them deadly weapons is truly breathtaking. Now the neocolonialist neocon regime changers have moved on to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. As in the case of Milosevic, it's self-styled 'progressives' who are at the forefront of the elites' campaign to demonize Venezuela..."

The international left should do everything in its power to prevent civil war. This means supporting a negotiated solution to the conflict. To be effective, such a solution must offer something to both sides: a credible electoral calendar that provides the opposition with a peaceful path to office, lessening the chance of a military coup (and forcing the opposition to articulate concrete solutions to the crisis); and guarantees for those on the losing side of elections, decreasing the incentive for the government to avoid them at all costs. “Negotiated solution” is hardly a stirring rallying cry. Increasingly, however, it appears that it may be the only way to prevent a tragedy of untold proportions from unfolding in Venezuela.

"The warparty demands we fall in line on Venezuela. Repeat after me: (by orders of the NeoCon Thought Police): 'I condemn the evil dictator Nicolas Maduro and support a US-led humanitarian intervention to save the people of oil rich Venezuela! I condemn the evil dictator Nicolas Maduro..."

The head of the CIA has suggested the agency is working to change the elected government of Venezuela and is collaborating with two countries in the region to do so.

In one of the clearest clues yet about Washington’s latest meddling in the politics of Latin America, CIA director Mike Pompeo said he was “hopeful that there can be a transition in Venezuela and we the CIA is doing its best to understand the dynamic there”.

He added: “I was just down in Mexico City and in Bogota a week before last talking about this very issue, trying to help them understand the things they might do so that they can get a better outcome for their part of the world and our part of the world.”....

At this point, if the CIA wants a change-up in Venezuela, they're only agreeing with most Venezuelans.

That said, I certainly hope and pray that Trump doesn't do anything stupider than he's already done. And no, TBH, I just can't believe that every Venezuelan who's sick and tired of the current government is really just a CIA plant/stooge/employee. To hear the wooly-headed fringe media tell it, erryone in Venezuela supports Maduro except for millions of fascist millionaires and billionaires, and some American actors in cheap wigs and moustaches. Venezuela must be the only country on earth where half of the population is a 1%er.

The Venezuelan opposition and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos have both joined the growing chorus of voices in Latin America warning the Trump administration against any possibility of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

Vice President Mike Pence's trip to four countries in Latin America this week began with an unequivocal message for the Trump administration from Santos on Sunday.

"I've told Vice President Pence the possibility of military intervention shouldn't even be considered," Santos said in a joint press conference in Cartagena, Colombia. "A transition in the Venezuelan regime toward democracy must be a peaceful transition. It must be hopefully a democratic transition. And it must be done quickly.".....

"As one of the last regional holdouts against a return to neoliberalism, Venezuela has been especially vulnerable to isolation and targeting, and not just by the US. Raul Burbano says that Canada wants to 'marginalize' Venezuela because it does not follow the neoliberal 'free trade' agenda that Trudeau is pushing...."

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela had become a pariah among fellow Latin American leaders as his beleaguered country staggered toward dictatorship. But a threat by President Trump to use the American military against Mr. Maduro’s government has united those leaders in a different direction: demanding that the United States keep out of the region’s affairs.

“The possibility of a military intervention shouldn’t even be considered,” Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, said on Sunday during a visit by Vice President Mike Pence to the region. “America is a continent of peace. It is the land of peace.”

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela had become a pariah among fellow Latin American leaders as his beleaguered country staggered toward dictatorship. But a threat by President Trump to use the American military against Mr. Maduro’s government has united those leaders in a different direction: demanding that the United States keep out of the region’s affairs.

“The possibility of a military intervention shouldn’t even be considered,” Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, said on Sunday during a visit by Vice President Mike Pence to the region. “America is a continent of peace. It is the land of peace.”

Opposition candidates running in Venezuela's October gubernatorial elections will be investigated to make sure none were involved in violent political protests this year, the head of a new pro-government truth commission said on Wednesday.

The panel was set up earlier in the day by the constituent assembly elected last month at the behest of socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Government critics say the commission is designed to sideline the opposition and bolster the ruling party's flagging support ahead of the October vote.

Also before the assembly is a bill that would punish those who express "hate or intolerance" with up 25 years in jail. The opposition fears such a law would be used to silence criticism of a government that, according to local rights group Penal Forum is, is already holding 676 political prisoners.

"The Bolivian foreign minister has firmly rejected Washington's hegemonic ambitions as manifested in Donald Trump's latest threat of a military intervention in Venezuela, while underlying Caracas' right to self-determination without outside meddling.

'The hegemony of the Western world and the US empire has come to an end', Mamani told RT."

Opposition candidates running in Venezuela's October gubernatorial elections will be investigated to make sure none were involved in violent political protests this year, the head of a new pro-government truth commission said on Wednesday.

The panel was set up earlier in the day by the constituent assembly elected last month at the behest of socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Government critics say the commission is designed to sideline the opposition and bolster the ruling party's flagging support ahead of the October vote.

Also before the assembly is a bill that would punish those who express "hate or intolerance" with up 25 years in jail. The opposition fears such a law would be used to silence criticism of a government that, according to local rights group Penal Forum is, is already holding 676 political prisoners.

"The question is whether this is the peace he's looking for: creating a law that gives him and his obedient supreme court judiciary powers to lock up dissidents for 25 years," Tamara Taraciuk, head Venezuela researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a Wednesday telephone interview.

"The proposal includes incredibly vague language that would allow them to jail anyone for almost anything," she added.

Venezuela's constituent assembly on Friday gave itself the power to pass laws, superseding the opposition-led congress and fuelling criticism that the new all-powerful legislative superbody is undermining democracy in the crisis-stricken country.

...

But the decision suggests the constituent assembly, elected in July in a vote boycotted by the opposition, is more interested in limiting the opposition's political influence than rewriting the constitution, which is its official task.

The dramatic move follows a refusal by the congressional leadership to swear an oath of loyalty to the assembly, whose election the opposition considers illegitimate.

The sanctions Trump signed by executive order are bound to dramatically escalate tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. and exacerbate the country’s economic crisis.

Not to mention giving a whiff of credibility to the whole "economic war" rhetoric, and refocusing people's frustration on Trump instead of the government.

A smarter man would have fast-tracked a billion dollar "charity aid" package for Venezuela. Maduro would surely refuse it anyway, but he'd have a much harder time convincing the people that the US is the real problem.

Mark:​I don't think they can get support. Even the opposition in Venezuela, most of them are not going to ... I don't think any of them are actually going to openly support it. Again, it was done for political reasons. One for Trump at home, but also if you look at what's happened recently in Venezuela since the election of a constitutional assembly, things have gotten very quiet. The protest have died down and the opposition leadership even some that are relatively hard-lined decided to participate in the October regional elections for governors and regional governments. That, I think is something that the sort of Rubio faction is more hard-lined than even most of the hard-lined pro-regime change Venezuelan.

​What they're trying to do by this is to create more chaos and instability. I don't think it's necessarily going to help them, but that's the only thing they could get out of it. In other words, they want to get people back in the streets, and not pursuing anything that could lead to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Which participation in the elections, of course, would be a step towards a peaceful resolution.

quote:

Mark:​I think the international community should condemn it. A lot of them will. Here we only here about the governments that are allied with the U.S. mostly, but if you look at the whole world. Or even if you look at the Organization of American States for example, the Trump Administration, despite having a Secretary General whose fanatically opposed to the government and really fanatical all together. Trying to get the OAS to take action against Venezuela.

​They never were able to pass anything in the Organization of American States, because the majority of actual governments in the OAS will not support it. Of course, they can't get anything at the U.N. it's ridiculous to the world. On that basis I think that they will ... A lot of countries, a lot of governments won't say anything, because they just don't want to have trouble with the United States, but nobody is going to support them. It would be good if there were more governments, who were willing to come out and say that this is outrageous and it's a violation of international law and an act of aggression against a sovereign state.

Few question "Why?" the massive Western media concern is now on the internal affairs of Venezuela.

As if the US (Trump, or no Trump) and its client states, and media, care a rats ass about "dictatorships" or "democracies" except as an eternal propaganda dog whistle to justify rapacious hegemonic economic and military foreign policy, invasion, coups, war crimes, sanctions, etc.

Compare the flawed but elected democracy of Venezuela with any number of US (and Canada) allies and business partners such as Saudi Arabia--and the long list of others.

Trump’s Support and Praise of Despots Is Central to the U.S. Tradition, Not a Deviation From It
Glenn Greenwald

SINCE AT LEAST the end of World War II, supporting the world’s worst despots has been a central plank of U.S. foreign policy, arguably its defining attribute. The list of U.S.-supported tyrants is too long to count, but the strategic rationale has been consistent: In a world where anti-American sentiment is prevalent, democracy often produces leaders who impede rather than serve U.S. interests.

Imposing or propping up dictators subservient to the U.S. has long been, and continues to be, the preferred means for U.S. policymakers to ensure that those inconvenient popular beliefs are suppressed. None of this is remotely controversial or even debatable. U.S. support for tyrants has largely been conducted out in the open, and has been expressly defended and affirmed for decades by the most mainstream and influential U.S. policy experts and media outlets....

Nothing wrong with trying something new. But I wonder why not just chickens? They're familiar, I think they have a shorter life cycle, and they're surely better "foragers" for those who can't afford to purchase "feed". Not to mention the eggs!

I know that, where I shop at least, a cleaned whole rabbit is about $23, whereas a similar sized chicken is going to be about $9, so I have to wonder whether rabbit is really the cheap and easy food of the future.

"As the Global Affairs department explained the move, about two weeks ago Canada and the Trump government of the US formed an 'Association', the aim of which was to 'take economic measures against Venezuela..."

Funny how Minister Chrystia Freeland and Canada can offer wholehearted support to the coup-imposed Nazi oligarchy of Ukraine, yet presume to sanction Maduro and Venezuela for alleged sins against democracy...

"On occasionof the 36th Session of the Human Rights Council, 116 'NGOs' signed a letter demanding that Venezuela be a priority for the OHCHR. The effort was spearheaded by none other than Human Rights Watch (HRW). HRW has a long and documented history of bias and outright lies in their reports on Venezuela, which is no surprise given their blatant revolving door with the US government..."

The effort was spearheaded by none other than Human Rights Watch (HRW). HRW has a long and documented history of bias and outright lies in their reports on Venezuela, which is no surprise given their blatant revolving door with the US government..."

I'm sure they're in Trump's pocket, inherited from Obama's pocket.

But what of all of those 116 NGOs?

Bought and paid for, too, NDPP?

If you're still uncomfortable actually interacting with other babblers, please just post a link to some k00Kblog or whatever. Don't let me be the one to throw you into the deep end of the world of other humans.

The focus on the economic war v. Venezuela, by US corporate interests, while true, misses a vital point...as discussed by Chomsky on non sustainable economies in Latin America......

I can only refer to Julie Buxton´s remarkable report on Venezuela at the recent conference on Revolutions by the Geopolitical Economic Research Group at the University of Manitoba....the colossal failure of the Bolivarian Revolution likewise must be examined in detail.....wherever we may succeed to build political transformation...we had better not repeat these mistakes....the total emphasis on oil production and exportation instead of building a self reliant economy in all its diversity....building a food producing economy in the rich territory of Venezuela, developing regional processing industries to make the country self reliant etc. the talk was remarkable,,,geopoliticaleconomy.ca

So much of this would have been avoided if only the MUD majority in Congress had been willing to be a loyal, constitutional opposition...simply presenting alternative programs to those of Maduro, without engaging in a pointless effort to remove the man from office. He'd been elected to a full six-year term-they should have let it go at just trying to win the next presidential election.

It was never a reasonable expectation of the MUD that they'd actually get Maduro to resign and turn over the presidency to the right wing.